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New York by car, and Genora asked if there was anyone around who could escort them on their sightseeing tours. Sol had never moved so quickly.42 The next day the trio saw Citizen Kane and then headed for a Greenwich Village nightclub, where Sol bought corsages for his two beautiful companions. The band began to play “Stardust,” and Sol saw tears streaming down Genora’s face. Embarrassed, he asked Barbara for a dance. “Why is Genora crying?” he wanted to know. “Stardust was Genora and Kermit’s favorite song. They are now separated. She made me promise not to tell anyone that they are getting a divorce. She came to New York to get away from it.” Before the dance ended, Barbara told Sol that her husband was pressing her to return to Flint. Would Sol please keep an eye on Genora while she was in New York? Well . . . Yes!43

There were several days of sightseeing, art museums, movies, and Broadway shows. Genora also found a picket line or two that were as exciting as the cultural events she witnessed. She joined Sol in a picket line on Staten Island, where merchant mariners were demanding wage and safety improvements. She gave a speech to the assembled men, many of whom remembered her work in the 1937 sit-down. As Sol and Genora continued to travel around New York City, his feelings for her deepened: “With each passing hour I knew I was helplessly in love. I intended to propose marriage at the first propitious moment.” When he introduced Genora to his two sisters on Long Island, he referred to Genora “as my intended wife.”44 Genora did not contradict him, though (she told him later) the biggest stumbling blocks were the seven-year difference in their ages and her two sons, Dennis and Jarvis.

Genora and Sol always celebrated their marriage anniversary on September 19, 1941. “That is the day we agreed to be man and wife. We did not need a certificate from a bourgeois court to affirm this decision.”45 (Her divorce from Kermit was official on February 24, 1942.) They formally and legally married in December 1942, although Genora continued to use the name Johnson for some time.

Genora took Sol back to Flint with her. He fascinated the Albros, who loved his New York accent, especially when he dropped his r’s and said “corna” for “corner,” or “borda” for “border.”46 By this time, Genora’s father, Raymond, largely ruined by the Depression, made a mock lament that his elder daughter had “married a Jew.” Sol learned later that Genora’s father told her that marriage to him was “all right,” but they “shouldn’t have children.”47

Just a few weeks after Genora and Sol’s declaration of marriage, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and their lives, along with those of millions of other people, were changed forever. Both Genora and Sol thought the war “imperialist,”48 and Sol did not wish to be drafted. As long as he sailed regularly with the merchant mariners, he was deferred from the draft. Whenever he finished a job with a particular vessel, its owner notified his draft board, located in Flint. He then had a month to get work on another ship. Without a new assignment, he was vulnerable to the draft.49 The young married couple prepared for a long and grim war with Japan and Germany and their allies.

If Genora had thought that the 1937 sit-down was the climax of her personal and professional life, she was wrong. The Death Watch and expulsion from the SP in 1938, separation from Kermit in 1939, and then marriage with Sol Dollinger in 1941 gave her life a number of new perspectives. She had moved far from the Methodist girl who taught Sunday school to an ardent supporter of Trotskyism.

Four Genora’s Wars

The sit-downs of 1937, World War II, and their immediate aftermath marked the beginnings of the modern women’s rights movement in the United States. These events fused feminist activism with progress in unionism, and Genora Dollinger played a role in the merging of these two movements. Feminist progress was made by women activists of the late 1930s who were UAW members (and this list included Genora Johnson Dollinger), “when the wartime